Remember when there was a big question if anyone would be comfortable enough to climb into a driverless car to get from point A to point B? Well, according to Waymo, the answer is definitely yes.
Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit of Alphabet, reports that it is booking 250,000 paid rides per week in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin. That marks a 50,000 ride increase since February.
CEO Sundar Pichai told analysts on an earnings call that Waymo is actively exploring ways to scale up its business, saying, “We can’t possibly do it all ourselves.” They are working on partnerships with Uber and automakers, as well as maintenance businesses.
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“Waymo is continuing to progress in building on its impressive technological achievements to scale rapidly and develop a sustainable business model,” noted Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi on the call.
As CNBC reports, Waymo beat Elon Musk’s Tesla in the race to bring autonomous vehicles to the masses. Musk, on an earnings call this week, says he is not impressed. Musk told investors that Waymo’s vehicles “cost way more money” because of their “expensive sensor suite.” He said Tesla’s tech is much cheaper to scale and predicted they would have “99% market share or something ridiculous.”
John Krafcik, former Waymo CEO, clapped back, telling Business Insider, “Tesla has never competed with Waymo — they’ve never sold a robotaxi ride to a public rider, but they’ve sold a lot of cars.” His email continued, “And although Tesla hopes to compete with Waymo someday, they’ve failed utterly and completely at this for each of the 10 years they’ve been talking about it.”
Other players in the robotaxi competition include Amazon’s Zoox, Mobileye, May Mobility, WeRide, and Baidu’s Apollo Go. But as of now, Waymo seems to be far ahead in the race.
